As climate events increase in frequency and intensity, evidence of health impacts often relies on limited data that fails to capture the variable nature of exposures and health responses. This panel showcases innovative methods that provide more precise measures of environmental exposures and outcomes. Presentations will explore four emerging surveillance approaches: 1) using pharmaceutical claims data to detect early respiratory and mental health impacts of wildfires and extreme heat; 2) dynamic modeling of individual PM₂.₅ inhalation doses along multimodal transit trips to identify high-risk microenvironments; 3) geospatial digital twin models assessing compound risks from temperature, air pollution, and urban infrastructure; 4) and integrating satellite-derived coastal land-use data with longitudinal surveys to quantify the cognitive and mental health benefits of ecosystem conservation.
Together, these methodologies offer a more granular understanding of climate-health pathways, strengthening our capacity for real-time monitoring, targeted prevention, and equitable health planning.
Moderator
Geoffrey Anderson, MD, PhD
Geoffrey Anderson is a Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto. In that role, he has had the pleasure of supervising postdoctoral fellows and graduate students and developed a MSc Concentration in System Leadership and Innovation. He has been funded by a range of international, national and provincial agencies to conduct research on a number of different topics, most recently on healthy aging and strategies to identify and prevent cognitive decline. He is a Fellow in the CCCHSC care and a member of the TAHSN CoP on sustainable healthcare delivery. His current research interests include the impacts of climate change on health outcomes in older people.
Panelists
Jérémie Boudreault, MSc, PhD
Jérémie Boudreault is an Assistant Professor at Université Laval in Quebec City. He holds a PhD from the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) and a post-doctoral fellowship from McGill. His research focuses on modelling the health and economic impacts of climate risks such as extreme temperatures, wildfires and flooding. To that end, he leverages both novel statistical models and AI/machine learning approaches.
Fizzy Fan, MEM, PhD
Fizzy Fan is an Assistant Professor in Transportation Engineering at the University of Alberta. Her research examines transportation as a pathway linking climate change and health, including thermal comfort in travel environments, air-pollution exposure during wildfire and non-wildfire days, and equitable access to essential services. Her work supports healthier, more climate-resilient mobility systems.
Nicoline Foulon Nørgaard, MSc
Nicoline Foulon Nørgaard combines a background in economics, public health and urban epidemiology for a PhD: Modelling environmental health hazards with digital twins for European urban spaces. She works in Horizon Europe project healthRiskADAPT at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and is a researcher in transport and urban planning (TransFrUrban) at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. She has extensive experience from the Global South and holding public office and now uses applied mathematics and geographic information systems (GIS) in the design of healthy cities.
Amanda Guimbeau, MSc, PhD
Amanda Guimbeau is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Université de Sherbrooke (Québec, Canada). Her research interests are in development economics and applied microeconomics, with a focus on environment, human capital, and gender. She works on topics that include the long-term determinants of economic development, the gender-differentiated effects of public policies, the role of safety nets, the impact of climate change on human capital and welfare, and the effectiveness of local climate resilience initiatives.